Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
